Towards the end of January, 2024, I got a call from Gus Rios of Gruesome and Left to Die. I didn’t answer the phone, however, as I was busy at work. I was like, I’ll call Gus later. It can’t be important, we’re not in a band together, but sometimes we chat about toys. Whatever new G.I. Joe thing is coming out, he can tell me about it later. Then I get text from Matt Harvey who is a bandmate to both me and Gus. Matt’s is insistent that I call Gus back immediately. It’s urgent. So I do… and Gus does want to talk about a new G.I. Joe thing coming out. And the new thing is us. We’re going to be the band from the G.I. Joe cartoon. We’re going to be Cold Slither.
In some backroom deal with Tomax and Xamot, Gerardo at Reigning Phoenix Music had gotten the rights to create Cold Slither in real life and to put out an album. Gerardo, also a toy collector, had called his old friend Gus, knowing that Gus had expressed an interest in doing Cold Slither as a real band. Hell, he and I had talked about it in 2020, but I thought it was more of a lark: a pipe dream. Now Gus, with a little bit of help from Matt, had the deal to write and record an actual album. And we were going to play San Diego Comic-Con. And it was all based around the release of a new toy showcasing the band. And it’s official. We’re toys.
It’s still hard to wrap my little nerd head around it all, as a lifelong G.I. Joe collector and enthusiast. I had been collecting and been adding to my collection my entire life, I’d taken up toy photography as a hobby in 2020, and now I was gonna be a giant doll.
According to Gus, they needed me because he needed a “Joe bro” in the band. That we were. According to Matt, they needed me because I have theater kid energy and know how to put on a show. At no point was my bass playing mentioned, but I wasn’t insulted. They both know I’m solid and they didn’t need a Jaco Pastorius. Jaco doesn’t know shit about G.I. Joe.
At first I was gonna be Ripper, the bassist in the cartoon. Well, maybe he was the bassist or maybe the animators decided not to draw six strings to save money. Hasbro decided after my inclusion that the latter was the case and Ripper was to be the lead guitarist in the toy set. I had a week of panic attacks about this. I started guitar lessons anew. I HAD to be a part of this. Then it hit me; just switch characters. I was deathly afraid I was gonna be out before a live not had been played, but it was fine. Better, actually. They had no problem with me playing a different character, Torch, which was better suited for me anyway as we already had the same facial hair style. Kismet!
We were a secret. I couldn’t tell anyone about this, not friends or family, except or my girlfriend, of course, because she was going to be coming with me. We’d long talked about making her a Baroness costume. She’s not, like, into G.I. Joe, but she loves cosplay like I do and the Baroness is just one of those long-running cosplay go-tos. She wanted to have a stab at it and this was the perfect opportunity. So, we built her a Baroness costume largely out of purchased items, but I did manage to make her a tactical breast plate out of EVA foam for a more cartoon-y look that would befit hanging out with the band.
One thing I need people to understand is that though this was a sanctioned act by Hasbro, we really didn’t get anything from Hasbro. They said “sure, go ahead” and that was about it. We did get toy renders before they were announced so we could put together our costumes accurately. Everything was purchased, though, by us on our own dime up to the point where we played the show. RPM made arrangements for our stay in San Diego, but travel, costuming, gear, show stuff, it was all out of our own wallet and we just hoped the show would be successful to help us get paid back.
To help us put on a professional looking show on a no-budget, we turned to me and Matt’s other band, Exhumed. We had the gear and the van and San Luis Obispo. Our drummer, Mike, had built nifty guitar cab cases that also housed televisions that we could use to enhance the show with video elements. Exhumed had chainsaw for the drummer to use which was very in-character.
For the video elements, I used the four music videos created by Costin Chioreanu plus I bootlegged a bunch of G.I. Joe cartoon episodes from the Internet and edited them to be our background. I also used stills and some motion editing to pay homage to the comics by Larry Hama and packaging art by Hector Garrido. I wanted people to know we were fans just like them, not just some random musicians hired by a company.
Costuming was the fun part. I put together lists of stuff that everyone could purchase online to help make their costumes. Some of it had to be sourced by actually shopping however, which is how I ended up in the Leather District in San Francisco, picking out fetish leather stuff for Matt’s character.
Most of my costume was easily purchased, but I wanted to make sure I had accurate, well-fitting leather gauntlets for my character.There’s a lot of YouTube DIY videos out there, but finding one on how to source leather isn’t there and it was a stress trying to figure out a world of crafting I just wasn’t a part of. I’d done a bit of leather crafting in the past, mostly with spare bits here and there, but to up my game I sourced a god-damned half-a-cow hide from a place in Napa, California. I went through samples and all that to find the right kind of leather and used a template of my favorite gauntlet that I’ve had for 18 years.
With the gauntlets done, I had to up another game: sewing. I’d done Ghoul hoods already, but I know those are not sewn very accurately or with much thought put into the stitches and such. They look cool, good enough. Now I had to sew a bespoke tee shirt. Tee shirts are so ubiquitous, but sewing a design onto one was a challenge for me. It had to be sharp, accurate, and stretch with my body’s movements. I consulted a lot with a friend in fashion design and watched a lot of YouTube videos. I only wanted to do this once.
With the costumes done and songs learnt, I headed to San Luis Obispo to meet up with the band for rehearsals before the big, debut show. This where I got to meet my new bandmates, Matt LaPlant as Monkeywrench on sound and Andy Way of KMFDM fame on drums. I steeled myself for a new level of professionalism as we played to clicks with backing tracks and used in-ear monitors. I have to say, I LOVE in-ear monitors now. I went with Shure SE215 ear buds in limited-edition red to match my costume. We rented some Sennheiser monitor gear. I don’t need notes to know how to do pig squeals, but really the only way I could have possibly sang actual notes doing back ups in the band is with these in-ears.
We were lucky that Brick-by-Brick in San Diego didn’t have a show the night before ours, so we loaded in early and got set up. That would help with the tight schedule the next day. Well, everything feels tight when you’ve never done it before. We had to soundcheck, put on these outlandish costumes we’d never played in before, and on top of that, I was responsible for Gus’s make-up to become Zartan. On top of everything, we were going to be performing a surprise song with Britta Phillips aka Jem! And she was a pro. A real pro. Oh, and the cover of War Pigs in tribute to the recently passed Ozzy Osbourne. Oh, and did I mention the keytar?
The toy version of me came with a keytar, not a bass guitar. Gerardo had been insistent that my character be shown with both on the record. And thank God for that, because what the fuck do I know about keytar? Still, I knew a keytar had to make an appearance. After some research, I purchased a vintage Yamaha SHS-10R keytar because for one, it was cheap. For two, it was cherry red and looked kinda like the keytar included with the toy. Every sound on it sounds like a shitty toy, but I’d seen some people dick around with pedals in front of it, so I used a Boss OC5 Octaver and Mooer Pitch Box to get a decent-enough dirty synth tone out of the thing.
Hell, I didn’t even know how I was going to incorporate it into the show until the day of. We made a little skit of it, where I would play the opening notes to the G.I. Joe movie theme song. I figured the Joe fans would enjoy that and it worked out. Except I thought it hadn’t because my in-ears muffled people screaming with joy. I only saw how much people enjoyed our show after the fact on video. I’m used to seeing moshing or head banging, but this was a crowd of toy nerds. They were amped up, sure, I just couldn’t hear it.
(© Alan Hess)
The show went off, it was sold out, and it was a lot of fun, but backstage we didn’t know what to do. That’s when we finally met the G.I. Joe crew from Hasbro as they blasted in and were so excited. “Best company retreat ever!” they crowed. I knew we’d done well.
By the time we exited the backstage, though, most of the crowd had gone. I’m not sure if we should have come out for photos, meet n greet, but whatever, it didn’t happen. I did get to meet Michael Charles Hill, however, the writer of the song and the episode Cold Slither. He seemed stunned that some silly job he’d had writing a children’s cartoon had ended up in a real-life rock extravaganza 30 years after the fact. Not gonna lie, I teared up a bit thanking him for my childhood memories and creating the opportunity I had now.
We packed up as quick as we could because the next day was gonna be a monster. We had to get up early and make our way to San Diego Comic-Con for the big meet and greet and singing. Of course, traffic was a nightmare around the con, so at one point, we exited our taxi and hoofed it to the Convention Center to make it just in time to meet up with Gerardo and get our badges. They shuffled us to the back staging area where we got to borrow a trailer to get our costumes and make up on. Then we waited until we were grabbed for the festivities to begin.
First, we were shuffled to the Hasbro booth for photo opportunities. We took photos with the Hasbro crew as well as the local chapter of the G.I. Joe cosplay group, The Finest CC. I kept in character the whole time, speaking in a gruff, nebulous English/Australian accent. We screamed “COLD SLITHER!” so many times that day my voice was hoarse at the end of it.
Then we signed records, toys, posters, the works for a few hours at the RPM booth. The line never seemed to let up. The Cold Slither toys had just been released that weekend and people were having so much fun getting to meet the “real” band. It’s all I could think about how excited I would be; but instead of being on the other side of the table, I got to be in the band!!! My feelings of surreality were too much to express into words.
Before the show, our attitude was “Hey, if this one show is it, this is gonna be a cool as fuck experience.” After the show, I knew… I was sure… this wasn’t the end of Cold Slither’s story.